Pevensey Arts and Literature Festival Day has taken a step forward this week as further information is becoming available in edition 20 of the Pevensey Bay Journal, published on Saturday 18 August and in local newsagents tomorrow (Wednesday 22 August). The team behind the festival offered more details today about how the Day will work, together with updates to the pilot event.—Bay Life, 21 August 2018
PILOT PEVENSEY ARTS AND LITERATURE FESTIVAL
We would like to thank everyone for their interest in the forthcoming pilot Pevensey Arts and Literature Day. The Day is comprised of eight talks from key experts in the country. All the talks have an association or direct link with Pevensey or Pevensey Bay.
Contributions by authors, organisations, comedy scripts and areas of interest include the following possible 25 minute talks;
Bayeux Tapestry—The European context
JMW Turner in Pevensey Bay—Tate Britain curators
Rudyard Kipling— Beyond England’s Gate
C.S. Lewis, The Lion, the Witch and the Eastern Gate at Pevensey Castle
The Goon Show—The Great Pevensey Bay Disaster
Julie Warren—Glarnies, Green Berets & Goons: The Life and Legacy of Larry Stephens
Suzie Dawkins—New Book about Sabrina, the fifties star who stayed at the Bay Hotel in Pevensey Bay
Tony Hancock Appreciation Society
Goon Show Preservation Society
Peter Sellers Appreciation Society
The talks are planned to happen simultaneously between two cafes based in Pevensey Bay. So far we have interest from the following organisations, authors and individuals.
goon scripts
Sussex Goon Preservation Society
authors
Julie Warren
Glarnies, Green Berets & Goons: The Life and Legacy of Larry Stephens
Suzie Dawkins
New Book about Sabrina, the fifties star who stayed at the Bay Hotel in Pevensey Bay
comedy
Peter Sellers Appreciation Society
Tony Hancock Appreciation Society
art
Tate Britain, curators, JMW Turner in Pevensey Bay
update
The pilot Pevensey Arts and Literature Festival Day will now take place in March/April 2019. Publicity materials will be made available online and print in late January 2019.
We are at the half way stage in planning the first Festival Day, which we hope will become an annual event, linked to developments taking place in Pevensey in 2019-2002.
We now hope that the Festival Day will be sponsored by a single prestigious new local organisation working in the area in 2019, with sponsorship opportunities for each of the talks for local businesses in addition.
Each of the eight talks commissioned will attract a fee of £195:00 to the author or organisation as a contribution to their expenses.
eight talks
The eight talks will take place simultaneously between two cafes in Pevensey Bay, facing each other, The Bay Diner and the Ocean View Bakery and Restaurant. Each of the talks will be ticketed at £3:50 per talk, with a ‘Cafe Society’ ticket to a selection of four of the talks, priced at £8:50.
There will also be arrangements for family tickets to the C.S. Lewis, The Lion, the Witch and the Eastern Gate at Pevensey Castle talk.
The total cost of putting on the Day, we estimate at £2,220. The majority of this sum will go towards payment to the invited eight national expert speakers in their field.
The balance of monies to put on the Day will be comprised of ticket production/promotion and online sales outlet support, publicity and a number of other small sundry expenses, such as three greetings hosts to support our VIP guests and promote the preview event.
The preview event will see popular local band Two Hep Cats perform for the visitors to the Festival Day, with their 25 minute fifties special show.
An Arts and Literature Quiz Night at the Ocean Bakery and Restaurant has already raised £140 to support the pilot event. Thanks to quizmaster James, we know the first book reputed to have been written on a typewriter (Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain).
We hope also to establish a Friends of Pevensey Arts and Literature Festival Day membership scheme, which will entitle people to hear first about the upcoming talks, be given a VIP opportunity to meet the authors and also to enjoy a preview of the event and 30% discount with Cafe Society tickets.
The plan is to adjust the membership scheme on a yearly basis as prices for tickets adjust. The membership scheme will be set at £5:00 per person per annum, from January 2019., with a family membership card price set at £12:00 for the year (up to 4 members), to enjoy the same benefits.
Current members of the Friends of Pevensey Bay Library will be invited to join the Friends of Pevensey Arts and Literature Festival Day membership scheme, free of charge.
summary
The planning of the Pevensey Arts and Literature Festival Day is extensive and the first event is now planned to take place in March/April 2019.
We hope that the value of the talks, to be repeated as themes each year, will prove to be an attraction to a wide audience., and we expect to play host to some new visitors to Pevensey Bay, with what we believe will become an annual event that will build into a regular new feature in the life of Pevensey and Pevensey Bay.
We have a small, but rich, literary and artistic vein to tap with our association with some major national figures, particularly from the field of fifties anarchic comedy and scripts. Those times are something to celebrate, and we are hope that our first pilot Day will be enjoyable and full of fun for everyone in this regard
conclusion
During the talk on Peter Sellers we hope that the people attending that particular part of the Day with their cafe society ticket, will enjoy the moment where they are invited to walk outside the Ocean View Bakery and Restaurant, 10 yards down the road, to the place where in 1957 Peter Sellers gave a unique an ad hoc performance to a coachload of pensioners down from Stepney.
A plaque at that point to the comedic genius on the ground , with the appropriate date of the performance, next to the stone that marks the site of the old village hall, might well become a useful marker for the first pilot Pevensey Arts and Literature Festival Day, and most important a marker to the genius that was Peter Sellers, and his association with Pevensey Bay.
Thank you very much indeed to everyone in Pevensey and Pevensey Bay that has shown interest in the Pevensey Arts and Literature Festival Day, and the enquiries and interest from people much further afield.
—Pevensey Arts and Literature Festival Day team, August 2018
